My last day at school was three days ago. My motive to get through final exams was that summer would be on the other side, which for me, of course, means hauling tires out of a river with the gang. It wasn't long before I was reminded what summer was all about.
Eric texted me last night and let me know to show up the next morning in clothes that could get wet. I knew what that meant. Stephanie and I shoved off at about 11:00 with only a camera, a roll of trash bags, and a mission - we were to float from the office a few miles north to some park we were relatively certain started with a "w", bagging what trash we could and gathering photo evidence of what we couldn't for some poor volunteers (probably us again...) to get later on. However, we didn't really know how long of a trip we were in for or even what the park was supposed to look like.
Within minutes, we came upon several big patches of the bank strewn with bits and pieces of tires, clothes, and intriguingly inscrutable scraps of plastic and rusted metal. Stephanie and I hopped out and started picking up trash, but after retrieving two tires and filling a whole trash bag, we took a step back and saw a bank that didn't look noticeably cleaner. Concluding that this would be a job for a bigger group, we got back in the boat and continued on as before, taking a few pictures here and there and picking trash out of the mud in a handful of other places that caught our eye.
After a while of this, we began to suppose that surely we should be done soon. We saw a sign for Zen Tubing, so we paddled over and asked the people there if they knew how long it was to where we were headed. They kindly told us they had no idea. Stephanie called Eric, who said that we were in fact headed to Woodfin, which made us a solid third of the way through our voyage. Wonderful.
As one leaves Asheville, the French Broad starts to get decidedly swifter and rockier. There were multiple occasions over the next couple of hours that I wouldn't have bet on us making it out right side up, but somehow we kept ourselves and our precious trash inside the boat. We eventually came upon what was certainly a park. Whether it was the right park was a little more questionable, but we were too relieved to be back on solid ground to worry over details. We called Eric up and he came not long after and helped us load everything into the pickup. All that remained was for us to hop in the back and ride back to the office, all the while trying to hold the boat in and pray we wouldn't all slide overboard off the open bed.
It's gonna be a good summer.
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